sucked down into the Abyss. A part of Dora’s mind tried to dive after them, catch them, but her better judgement held her back with iron fists. Though the Gift-Giver’s slow demise twisted blades through Dora’s heart sharp enough to cut through the bliss of her power, she had to stand firm, for the sake of the Realm.
Through the hundreds of miles where her mind pressed against the rock, Dora felt the moment when the quake stopped. Like silence after a distant child’s crying, the stillness was somehow more unsettling. It was the non-sound of someone, somewhere, beginning the long and terrible tally of the costs.
The fold in the Realm had not flattened out completely, but she’d at least stopped it putting any more strain on the rock over her head. The world hung heavy across what her mind insisted on thinking of as her shoulders. She tried not to think about the mad tangle of crumpled space in the air just above the fault. Just keep lifting, steadily, until it all straightened out.
Steadily was the word. Dora couldn’t feel any progress at all, but she didn’t dare risk forcing the pace. Too much force might twist the two halves of the Realm against each other or even just push them apart. She needed to distract herself until there was measurable movement she could check on.
Rel was still dismantling Keshnu and Taslin. Within the moil of purple that was Taslin, Dora’s hybrid-logic-enhanced awareness showed the patterns of mounting fear. Fear for Keshnu, for the First Realm if she failed, and fear for Rel, oddly. Why did the Gift-Giver fear for the renegade she was trying to stop? What made Rel important, even after all he’d done?
It seemed like Taslin’s fear for him was unjustified anyway. Even working together, the two Gift-Givers couldn’t touch him. Unless Taslin had something up her sleeve, but if she did, why was she waiting to use it, while Keshnu frayed ever closer to annihilation? Taslin had never struck Dora as the merciful type. If she feared for the Clearseer, her plan had to be beyond horrific.
A ribbon of purple smoke drifted away from the fight, caught the edge of the torrent and vanished into the depths. If Taslin did have a trick, she needed to use it soon. Dora tried to reach down, to hold Rel, or distract him, or maybe just to stop the Gift-Givers getting sucked over the ledge. It was no use. Every time she shifted her grip on the world to free up concentration, she felt jags of tension shoot through the stone.
Taslin’s patience ran out. The Gift-Giver billowed out from the fight suddenly, away from the edge. Rel lunged for Keshnu, then broke his stride and stumbled. Dora watched his eyes go wide as some realisation dawned. Keshnu, little more than a dull patch in the shimmering spray thrown off by the waterfall, rose. The Gift-Giver managed more than a drift, but he wasn’t moving fast.
Rel’s stumble continued even as he landed on all fours. Ahead of him along the crumbling edge of the concrete shelf, the research facility door blocked his path. What had he seen? What was he suddenly running from? Taslin was hanging back, unrecognisable as human, a boiling, muddled cloud of confusion and distress, spreading out in all directions. Flattening out, too, as if she was trying to wall Rel into that narrow strip of floor.
Taslin swept forward, smashing into Rel’s flank as his outstretched fingers clawed at an iron rod poking out from under the door. Clearseer and Gift-Giver vanished into the hammering cascade of water. Dora’s scream rang from the rocks, louder than the waterfall, more agonised than the grinding, terrible crash as her reflexive grab for the falling figures shook her grip on the Abyss.
Somehow, Dora got herself back under control, dimly conscious that her body was reporting battered joints and aching bones from the latest tremor. She steadied the sheets of bedrock in her grasp and pushed her consciousness down, searching for an angle that would show her Rel’s fate. She squinted with her mind’s eye against the terrible suction of the Realmlessness, and the darkness began to peek out through the curtain of water.
Far below, too small even to seem doll-like, Dora made out two tumbling bodies. How deep down in the Abyss did the Realmlessness start? Rel couldn’t be far above it, and Taslin was pursuing him hard, not just falling. The Gift-Giver spun through a sequence of distorted forms that set her flowing along hidden convoluted folds in Realmspace, faster than Rel could fall.
To push the limits of logic so hard, even with Dora’s open Sherim saturating the air with Wild Power, meant Taslin must have some serious reason for needing Rel. Maybe that explained why she’d been so troubled around him during his imprisonment. The Gift-Giver seized Rel like a hawk stooping on a sparrow, and for a moment they fell together, the Realmlessness boiling upward in hunger for them.
Taslin unfurled her might, and the two of them reversed direction as if hung on a spring. Rel dangled, spasming, from her arm. Dora recognised the whole-body nausea; he must not have shut off his Clearsight before catching a glimpse of the Realmlessness. The void outside the universe was bad enough as an invasive tickling at the underside of Dora’s mind. Rel would have had it full-force in the face.
He’d be out of action for a while, but at least he was secure. Taslin looked a little frayed around the edges, but she had more than enough strength to keep Rel under control. Keshnu, though, looked in serious trouble. For all his power and compassion – for all his humanity – the Gift-Giver was little more than a grey cloud, floating in defiance of the downward draught through the Abyss.
Dora flinched as a web of Taslin’s power reached up towards her, but the net fell short, draping itself over Keshnu and gathering him in. Dora waited for the little voice of normality at the back of her mind to point out that you couldn’t catch a cloud in a net, but it had apparently given up. Taslin reeled Keshnu in gently, despite the miniature storm of emotion that Dora could see crashing around inside her.
With Rel held firm under one arm and Keshnu in a tight bundle floating above an upraised hand, Taslin landed on the ledge. She drew Keshnu down to hang by her side, then threw Rel onto the concrete. He flopped flat, arm twitching as if he was still struggling to rise. Probably just lingering tremors from the Realmlessness. He couldn’t have any fight left in him, could he?
Taslin pushed out a bubble of force that pinned Rel down, then turned to look up at Dora. “Are you alright?”
Dora tried to speak, found herself not breathing. How long had that been going on? Long enough that it was far too late to be panicking about it. To Taslin, she sent, I’m fine. Will Keshnu survive? Second-Realm communication came to her naturally, as easy as speaking had become hard.
Taslin rippled with amusement at what she took for Dora’s showing off, until the question about Keshnu darkened her mood. He needs immediate help, and a long convalescence in the Second Realm.
What are you waiting for? The thought spread out of Dora as soon as her fear drove it to the surface. That was going to be a problem. No wonder Wildren tended to be more honest with one another.
How long can you hold the Abyss? Taslin’s tone was stern. Dora could conjure up the exact angle of the Gift-Giver’s eyebrows, the axe-blade intensity of her face, without having to look. The expression brought with it the undercurrent; the Abyss was more important than any one Gift-Giver, no matter how powerful or loved.
But Keshnu was right there, probably fading even further as they argued. Let me worry about the Abyss. It was hard to fill the message with conviction. Dora felt like she could hold forever, but she wasn’t breathing. Would her body start to protest?
Dora, your body is gone. Taslin answered the question while Dora was still pondering it, the brush of her ‘voice’ the caress of a down pillow, scented with the lavender soap Dora’s mother had always used for laundry. How long can you hold?
Dammit, I feel better than I have in a month. Save Keshnu! Dora caught the train of her thoughts short, aware she was doing the equivalent of raging at Taslin. More subdued, she finished He’s more important than me anyway. Only then did Dora take on board what Taslin had said. Her body was gone? Gone where?
It wasn’t on the ledge. Dora could see roughly where she’d been sitting, but there
was no sign of her. Pevan clearly hadn’t brought back any Wildren to help her. Had the damn girl bolted again? She was turning as unreliable as her brother. If she’d cost Dora her body, they were going to have words. At least the lack of a body explained why she wasn’t breathing or asphyxiating.
On the ledge, her slender height for once making her seem fragile, Taslin stood gazing up at Dora. There were tears glinting in the Gift-Giver’s eyes. Behind the artificial projection of a face, Taslin’s emotions were too complex for Dora to make out, but there was a kind of grim resignation there, a surrender that went far beyond and cut deeper than merely losing an argument. Though she didn’t speak, Taslin’s tone was quiet and hoarse. What about Rel?
Just for a moment, Dora found her thoughts turning inward. The Clearseer could have been the greatest Gifted of his generation. Her brother-in-arms. To Taslin, she sent He’s under your authority now. Not the authority of mankind, or of the treaties. Rel would answer to Wildren justice on Wildren terms. Dora wished she could swallow, to settle the phantom of nausea rising from her phantom gut.
I can’t just leave you to hold the world together. Taslin had let her face fall blank, but she couldn’t hide the despair washing through